Out of Sync
by Ryojin2
Summary: What if the psychic entity had caused the doctor some damage? Tenth Doctor, set between episodes 511  Midnight  and 512  Turn Left.
1. Chapter 1

Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble.

Set between 5x11 « Midnight » and 5x12 « Turn Left. »

* * *

What if the psychic entity had caused the Doctor some damage?

* * *

Out of Sync

Synchronisation... Please Do not Disconnect...

Donna smiled as she repeated his words with the languorous voice of an actress in an old Italian movie: "Molto bene!"

"No," the Doctor replied, his eyes widening with... was it fear? No, it wasn't.

"Don't do that. Don't. Don't."

The Doctor's voice was calm as he repeated "Don't" once more. There was no obvious terror in his eyes either. But something indefinable in his expression or lack of it blocked Donna's breath, dried her throat, caused a cold shudder to run down her spine and twisted her guts into a painful knot. It was one of those rare moments when her wild personality wished she was only a tiny turtle so she could disappear inside the thickest carapace and remain hidden at the bottom of the deepest hole. Something truly terrible had happened to the indestructible man sitting across the table.

Gooseflesh spread on her arms as she scanned the luxurious palace around them, the glass cupula twenty meters above their head, the now dark blue but still sparkling sky. Was it safe to be inside? What if the entity, not aware of their presence until the accident, came after them now? Would the station be secure enough to keep it from penetrating?

"Let's go back to the Tardis," the Doctor said as if he was reading her mind. And maybe he was after all.

"Sure. Yes. Good idea. Let's get off this planet of diamonds," she replied, standing up. "Anyways, I was tired of resting next to this beautiful, crystalline pool. You tell me, who wants a pool when one can have beaches? They don't have beaches here? Safe beaches I mean."

"No."

She did not like it when he did not try to reassure her. She did not like to see his gaze lost in thin air. And above all, she did not like to see him still sitting on his chair. A part of her felt an urge to shake him up without ceremony. But for once, she did not listen to that part and sat back, tense and silent.

Maybe he was just exhausted and needed rest. A good night rest. Curiously, she did not remember having seen him sleep like her, poor and miserable human that she was. Eat, yes; sleep, never. She could make him a cup of tea. A good one. Her best one. Or a chicken soup? Donna wondered with concern, still expecting the Doctor to shake out of his lethargy and break into his usual energetic smile, leap to his feet and ask her where she wanted to go, listing at all speed a dozen possible destinations, describing them at the same time and the reason why they would have so much fun visiting each of them. That was why she liked him. His strong, buoyant personality never let his darker self take control of his mood for long.

In ten seconds? Donna hoped, on the look out for any sign... that did not come. One minute? She could give him a couple of minutes at least. Still no reaction.

"Okay, then, let's go somewhere with safe beaches. Hawaï. Have you gone to Hawaï?" she asked, making an effort to sound cheerful.

"Sharks. Volcanoes," the Doctor replied, still sitting, his gaze frozen on an invisible spot somewhere.

"Right. Okay. The Mediterranean sea then? What do you think about Greece? Greece is beautiful. I've always wanted to go visiting its thousands of small inlets in a sailing boat."

"I know."

"Of course you know. What do you know? Never mind. Greece is safe, isn't it? Perfectly safe. Tons of tourists each year, no deaths."

"Earthquakes. Occasionally."

"Occasionally, yep..." she repeated, absent-minded.

"Tsunami, once. Jellyfish, most of the time. Volcanoes."

"Right, Mr. Cheerful. Let's rule out the beaches. Beaches are boring anyway. Mountain then? The Alps."

"Avalanches."

All right. He was not going to make this easy. But she was not ready to give up yet and thought a change in strategy was in order.

"Why don't you tell me instead: is there a place you want to go? Or simply be?"

"The Tardis."

"Then the Tardis it is," Donna exclaimed, pushing her chair away as she stood up once more, a bit discountenanced by the utter lack of life in his voice. "Okay, let's go this... way, if I remember correctly," she added, pointing toward the large corridor by which they had arrived fifteen hours ago. An eternity.

This time, the Doctor joined her, even though he remained silent. But the silence was good for Donna, as long as they kept walking down the hallway toward their blue ship, and they were. Donna even felt a little more relaxed as they reached the junction leading toward the hangar bay where the Tardis was parked until she realized the Doctor had come to a halt ten meters ago.

"What? What is it? she asked, fear rising to see him stare with wide, shaking eyes at the ceiling and the ground and...

"Something's wrong," he said as he walked toward the glass wall on his right. Nothing could break it, not even a category five tornado or hurricane, whatever they called the storms ravaging the planet.

"Extonic storms," the Doctor whispered.

"Thanks. Oi! Wait! Are you reading my mind?"

"You were thinking too loud. Five-feet thick you said?"

"I didn't say that. But anyway, stop reading my mind! That's-"

"I can't help it... I'm sorry. Something's wrong, terribly wrong," he said, brushing the wall with a shaking hand and sheer terror in his eyes as if he was afraid it was about to shatter into a thousand pieces.

"My arm, Donna..."

"What?" she asked as he abruptly turned his face toward her, making her gasp. There was terror this time in his eyes. And his voice was shaking as he said:

"Why aren't you all yelling and panicking? You should be yelling and panicking!"

"I might if you don't tell me what's going on!"

"My arm? Didn't you see it go through?"

"Go through what?" she frowned, concern growing exponentially.

"The wall..." he whispered, turning panicked eyes toward her.

"What are you saying, Dumbo?! How could your arm pierce through a five-feet thick wall? Oi, com'on, let's go back to the Tardis," she said, extending a hand toward him.

"Don't touch me!" The doctor shouted as he jumped away from her, so loud and so aggressively that she froze in shock as he added: "There's no wall… no station..."

"What are you saying there's no wall? It's there! The station is all around us. All just there!" Donna said, feeling panic rising when her eyes fell on his arm. "Your hand is… glowing? Why is your hand glowing?»

"Oh no. No, nonononono..." the doctor whispered as he held it right in front of his face, turning it to observe it from every angle, eyes growing in - _fear?_

"Your hand? Is it okay? Mind you, you have a spare one in the trunk so... but why is it glowing white?"

"You see it white? I see it glowing yellow..."

"Does it matter white or yellow?"

"It does a great deal, to me," he said before muttering: "Why do I see it yellow?"

"Well, you were seeing your hand through the wall too and it wasn't I can assure you. I tell you it's glowing white."

"But why do I keep on seeing it yellow then?"

"I don't know," Donna shrugged as the Doctor suddenly craned his neck to look over her shoulder.

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what now?"

Oh no, thought Donna, don't tell me he's losing it!

"The Tardis is singing... and I'm glowing yellow..."

"White."

" Are you sure? How can you be certain?"

"What the hell is going on with you?! I tell you: your hand is glowing white."

"White. Right. Not yellow. Not yellow…" the Doctor muttered as he started to walk again, slowly at first, and faster.

Could the mysterious entity still be in him? Donna wondered as she ran after him, feeling an inch from a panic attack. In the distance, she could see that the white glow had reached his elbow. What if he had caught something? Like a virus, an extonic, lethal bacteria? Should he be allowed to leave the planet in this state? Should he be quarantined? Was she going to catch whatever it was? Was it already too late? And of course, they could not rule out this damned psychic, malevolent, self-aware entity making a return.

"Doctor!" She shouted, tears running down her eyes as she entered in the Tardis and found him hunkered down next to the panel at the bottom of the core's main station, his sonic screwdriver in his left, still normal hand. Was it the panel he had told her never to touch? The one that even he could not look at what was inside without suffering severe damage, possibly death?

"What are you doing?" She asked as a yellow beam was suddenly released and the doctor plunged his left, glowing white arm down to the elbow in it, a move that snatched him a cry of pain.

"Stop where you are! Do not come any closer, Donna! You can't watch into the time vortex. It would kill you."

"But won't it kill you too?"

"It might."

His jaws clenched, he used his sonic screwdriver to put the panel back in place as much as possible, cutting the light from the time vortex save for one beam.

"I need another panel... Donna! Unscrew whatever panel on the outer ring and bring it to me asap!"

After grabbing his sonic screwdriver, she looked around, set her mind on one, dislodged it from the wall, and turned around to come back toward him when he shouted:

"Close your eyes! Don't look at the light!"

Eyes closed, she moved toward the core of the Tardis and delivered the sheet of metal.

"Screwdriver, please."

Startled, she stretched a shaky hand to give him back his instrument.

"Thanks. Good. Now Donna, I need you to go to the station and pull the main lever but on my mark only because once the Tardis is activated, it cannot, must not be stopped."

"Right," she said, moving around to do what he said, eyes still closed. "Ahhh!" she cried as she tripped over the stasis chamber containing his cut hand and fall on her knees.

"Oh! You can open your eyes now." She heard him say. "Sorry."

She was about to blare a reproach when she saw him and gasped. His whole body was glowing white and it was creeping up his neck. He looked like someone about to drown, craning his neck to keep his mouth above the water line.

"What's happening to you? Are you all right?"

"Donna? Listen to me! I don't have much time and it's very important that you listen to me. In no circumstance, you must not allow me to remove my arm from the time vortex. In no circumstance, you must not allow me to switch down the Tardis. The Tardis knows the procedure and will automatically turn off when the synchronization will be finished.»

"What synchronization?"

"The entity… it was a powerful psychic one. The most powerful I've ever encountered. Possibly the most powerful in the universe."

"You mean more powerful than you?"

"Oh more, so much more… I fought it, Donna, with all my strength… but I was failing, getting weaker with every breath, I knew it was only a matter of time. So I… I did what I had to do."

"What? What did you do?"

"I took all the risks, and I messed up… I messed up with my synapses to block its progression… I removed some safeties and rearranged others… "

"Safeties? What safeties?"

"Medical ones…"

"What do you mean? That you're what? Simply ill?"

"I'm falling out of sync with myself, Donna. It's not a serious condition, most of the time at least. Happened to our youngsters every now and then before the Proclamation of Shadows."

"A childhood disease? Like mumps? But wait a second... is it like for humans, benign if you're a toddler but more dangerous if you're an adult?"

"A bit more complicated than that but kind of. Anyway, the Tardis knows how to put me back in order. All I have to do is to remain in physical contact with the time vortex and let the Tardis go through the procedure. That's one of the reasons why they were originally created, you know, before we needed them to be able to travel through space and time again. Hopefully I took one old enough to still have the protocol in its memory bank."

"And if it doesn't have this procedure?"

"Then it would have been a genuine pleasure meeting you, Donna Noble," the Doctor said with a sad smile.

"Oh no, please, don't say that. There must be another way? You are a doctor after all, there must be a doctor for Time Lords somewhere to help you,» Donna said, tears on her eyes.

"The only ones still alive who can help me won't feel inclined to do so. Donna, I need you to listen to me very carefully now. Once you have pulled up the lever, you need to monitor the main screen as if your life depended on it. Well, my life obviously. If the red flashing light on top of the console turns on, you need to pull down the right lever immediately and push the squared button beneath it at the same time. You don't have a second to react, Donna. You need to be quick or… »

"Or what?"

"Or we'll… let's not worry about this right now."

"Or what?" Donna insisted.

"We'll be bordered by an unpleasant party, and I'll be brought for trial."

"Trial? What do you risk?"

"Oh, nothing… Death penalty maybe. Surely it is still the death penalty."

"Death penalty? Why?!" Donna asked in shock.

"That was not a fight I could win with one arm tight in my back, Donna. My species is not called Time Lords for nothing, Donna… and it is not without reason that we were once the most feared in the whole universe."

"But what did you do?"

"Let's just say I also removed some legal safeties."

"Legal? You broke a law? But surely they can't condemn you to death while you were acting in self-defense! Could mitigating circumstances plead in your favor? »

"It's not the first one I break, Donna…"

"Oi! You're a recidivist then? Am I flying with a fugitive? I have a right to know before the intergalactic police come and knock at my door!"

"Donna! Please…» the doctor said, his lower lip glowing now, "I have less than a minute left of consciousness… after that, I'll be as defenseless as a newborn can be. Please, if you ever trusted me, help me! Pull… the… lever... now."

"Pull the lever up to activate, down if the red flash light... wait a second! If I do that, won't the Tardis shut down and stop the treatment or whatever it is? You said it shouldn't be interrupted!"

"As soon as the red light turns green, you can pull it up again. Hopefully, the Tardis will not have to start the procedure over again. Donna, now, please… the lever," the doctor whispered as the white glow suddenly engulfed his whole head.

Her single heart pounding fast in her chest, Donna activated the Tardis and covered her ears as the engine produced a terrible, high pitch, screeching sound.


	2. Chapter 2

"Make it stop!" Donna yelled as she fell on her knees, huddling as tight a ball she could to escape the Tardis's terrible shriek.

How could something - _anything_ \- could produce such a horrific sound?! It was like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver magnified to the millionth power.

The Doctor... he had all but forgotten to warn her about this _not so_ insignificant detail, all focused he was on telling her how to operate the Tardis in case the red light flashed. But how was she supposed to see a red flashing light or any kind of light if her head imploded? A dreadful fate that was certainly going to happen in less than ten seconds if his damn, always too cold spaceship did not stop!

Tears ran down her eyes as a paralyzing feeling of helplessness swept over her, submerging her body and sinking her soul.

"Make it stop! You useless Dumbo!"

She wanted to shout and kick him for not warning her, for not giving her earplugs! Even if she did not die, she was certainly going to end up deaf! Was there a place to file a complaint about this kind of accident? An emergency number to call? The nine-nine-one of space-time travel? A health and security department for Tardises where she could lodge a complaint? Obtain compensation? Get the incompetent fired?

Donna's scream was silent because the Tardis muffled everything, even reason and logical thoughts, crushed the basic survival instincts that could have pushed her on her feet and out of the console room, leaving only pain and the blunt certitude that they were going to die. Well, _she_ was going to die. Maybe the Doctor would survive the procedure. He did not look like very confident though now to think about it. So maybe he knew the risk of not making it out alive was high. Did it matter in which order they died anyway? The thought that it was it, that she was never going to see her grandpa again was like a sword of ice in her guts.

"Stop, please, make it stop..." she said as she started to feel a dark, heavy veil falling on her body, crushing it against the grid platform.

And the Tardis stopped.

"Thank God..." Donna whispered in a sob, her voice weak as she pressed a shaky hand against her eyes, afraid to see her fingers stained red as she wiped her tears away. But they were not and this helped her to gather her senses.

"Doctor..."

Too unsteady to even dare to try to get up, Donna crawled her way around the Tardis' console and stopped at his side. Eyes wide with fear, she stretched a hesitant hand toward the white... thing that encased his body and winced. It felt cold and a bit sticky though strangely soft and resistant at the same time, like a cocoon. A medical cocoon that his ship built around him in order to treat his illness. Did that make the Tardis a kind of doctor? Donna wondered, perplexed. Well, he did say that the Tardis knew the procedure to put him back right in his boots so it made it at least a kind of medical instrument, or a vaccine, maybe...

"Doctor? Can you hear me?" she asked, touching the material around his face. How could he breathe through this?

"Doctor! Move your hand if you hear me!"

And he did.

"Wow!" Donna gasped, surprised as she did not really expect him to be conscious inside the cocoon.

She was about to call him again when the cocoon suddenly emitted a wave of burning heat. Donna jumped back a good meter. Her back against the guardrail, she stared with dread as it started to wave, as if there was a swarm of bugs inside it instead of a man before suddenly shrinking, from the six feet one of the doctor's height to barely twenty inches.

"What the..." she gasped in horror before crying in fear: "Doctor! Doctor!"

The image of the Doctor's body being incinerated sent shivers down her spine. Donna shook her head to free herself from the feeling of disgust her mind had just created. Not that the reality was any better. In fact, as far as she could think straight under such a stressful situation, she determined that there were only two possibilities: either the Tardis had killed its pilot or it was doing exactly what he was supposed to do, which was to heal him. It was not as if she could pretend to understand even the quart of a tenth of a millionth of what was going on on the ship by a "normal" day anyway.

"Focus Donna, you have to focus!" she spoke to herself, needing to hear a familiar if not friendly voice. "His hand, or skeleton or whatever it is now, is still connected to the core. That's good. I guess. What next? Oh yes, the screen, you dumb idiot!"

Wobbling, Donna grabbed the edge of the console to haul herself up and walked back to the screen. It was black. And there was like a bluish kind of little circle moving like a...

"Oh great, the system is either rebooting of frozen! What am I suppose to do, call the intergalactic geek squad? OI! TARDIS! Turn on the screen!"

"Please?" she added after a couple of seconds.

"Worth a try..." she whispered. "All right, Donna. You're talking to yourself, aloud, but that is no reason to panic. The Doctor said to look at the screen as if his life depended on it so look at the dumb black screen. Maybe something will pop up at some point. Oh! And don't forget to watch for that flashing red light too!"

Feeling better, Donna coerced herself to watch the screen for the next ten minutes without blinking before she felt an urge to look at her watch. It was eleven fifteen pm on Midnight. She had not bothered to change it upon stepping in the Tardis' universal time zone and would not do it because the screen was not being cooperative enough right now to provide the information. So eleven sixteen it was from now on.

"Still frozen... still frozen... Is there a reboot button on this screen? No. Not a good idea. How long already? Two minutes?! Only two minutes?! I was never one to stay focused..." Donna whined, starting to feel miserable as she remembered the comments of her teachers on her report cards. "Not focused, not patient, incapable of staying on her chair unless there's glue on her bottom, sitting not on her vocabulary, inattentive and so on and so on..."

A laugh made her jump. It was a childish laugh. Babyish. Coming from somewhere near the Doctor. No! From above. Trying hard to keep her left eye on the screen, Donna lifted her right eyebrow and looked around. Not that this was efficient. The laugh again. Did the Tardis have a stowaway? But how could a child sneak in anyway?

The laugh again. Closer.

"Hello? Who's there?" she asked as she craned her neck, still trying her best to keep the screen in her sight. But she did not see anything until she felt something pulling at her pant.

"What?" she gasped at the sight of a baby crawling clumsily on the grid floor. A chubby, naked baby with his toothless mouth wide open in laughter, his eyes reduced to two slits from which a bluish-greenish-Tardish light filtered like a ray under a door. He was now laughing so heartily that Donna could not help but join him, crying at the same time.

"Oh my god! What are you doing here? And what are you anyway?" she added, a part of her mind telling her that he had to do something with the Doctor because there was a whitish glow on his skin. And he was about the same size as the cocoon. Could it be him? Could he be the Doctor?

"Yep, definitively boy. Baby Doctor..."

She was about to stand up when she felt an urge to obey the Doctor's command to not keep her eyes away from the screen and watch for the red light because his life depended on her ability to focus on these two tasks. Could the baby be a distraction? From the corner of the eye, she watched him try to push himself up, both hands on the ground, straightening his chubby legs in the yoga dog position and face planted, laughing even harder at his own demise.

"You're bonkers..." she said, amused to see him try and face plant half a dozen times in a row before deciding to crawl his way down the platform.

"And an adventurer... Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Come back here, you little tyke. I've got to stay here and watch for the bad red light. I can't go chasing you around all day!"

The baby, still laughing, made his way out of the platform and headed for the stairs.

"Damn it!" Donna said as she stood up, feeling like she had no choice but to leave her post because caring for a baby seemed a greater responsibility in this huge ship that certainly could not pretend to be baby proof.

A couple of seconds later, she was back with a heavy baby in her arms, fighting to cover him with her purple, woolen cardie.

"Com'on, how aren't you freezing?" she said as the baby's chubby fingers seized the cardie and throw it on the ground. "Can't your species feel the cold?"

The baby doctor slapped his hands together and laughed before grabbing her hair to put a strand in his mouth.

"No, no, no. Not for eating. Wait a sec. What do babies Time Lords eat?"

At that question, the baby lowered his shining, bluish eyes to her chest.

"Oh no, don't you dare look at me that way. I'm not your mummy. Definitively not your mummy. NO way!"

A cold sensation made Donna's eyes spread.

"And I'm not your diaper either!" she whined, putting the baby down with a wince of disgust.

"Oh, no don't cry! It's okay..."

She had barely finished her sentence that the baby made a sprint for the staircase.

"Damn you!" she snapped, standing up at his pursuit again just as the Tardis jolted like trapped in one of those little timey wimey disturbances as the Doctor called them. With dread, she watched the baby tumble down the stairs as the Tardis emitted a new, terrible shriek and all lights went out as she fell and bounced against the platform guardrail.

The pain had rendered Donna breathless when the Tardis finally stabilized, stopped to shriek and restored the lights.

Ignoring her own miseries, she sprung to her feet and climbed down the stairs, hoping he had not fallen to the bottom of the Tardis, which varied from time to time because it depended on how much power the Doctor needed to harvest for his trips. Right now, it was twenty-two floors down.

Donna gasped when the stair suddenly stopped in the middle of the first flight on a door.

"What the... how come? Where's the rest... where are all the corridors?" she said, brushing her palm against the smooth surface of the door which opened with a slight hiss.

"Oh my god..." gasped Donna.

In the middle of a room with white, slick walls, a child was sitting, his head buried in his knees, his arms around his legs, rocking back and forth in silence.

Careful, she walked and kneeled in front of him and saw the shining tears running down his face when he raised his dark-haired head.

"Hey, are you all right?" she asked, thinking that he could not be more than six years old. But then again, she had only a human child's growth rate to refer to. He could be sixty for all she knew and still look like a child.

"Doctor? Are you all right?" she asked again, trying to break through his absent-minded stare that began to scare the hell out of her. What could his incredibly advanced brain possibly think?

 _"Are you an ape?"_

"OI!" she cried, more surprised to hear the question in her head than outraged by the offense.

Living with the Doctor for some time, she was used to hearing his blunt questions when his eyes seemed to have traveled a million light years away and come back with a sad or painful memory, or both. She usually even liked his outbursts of honesty, no matter how discourteous they could sound because he seemed more vulnerable in those times. Less god, more human.

The child Doctor suddenly crawled back fast against the wall and then a corner in an obvious fear.

"Don't be afraid, I just want to help you, Doctor," she said as the Tardis jolted again, more violently than the previous times. Just as the lights went out, Donna reached for him and protected him in her arms until the floor stopped shaking beneath them.

 _"Let go of me, Ape!"_

"Oi! Watch your language Doctor!" Donna replied faster than she realized two things: the voice had a deeper tone and she was facing an angry-looking teenager.

 _"Let go of me, Ape!"_

"Get out of my head first!" Donna shouted, standing up and moving back a few steps.

 _"Who are you? I demand to know who you are and what are you doing... wait a second_... _I'm in a Tardis. What am I doing in a Tardis? And what is an ape doing in it, polluting its atmosphere with carbon dioxide?!"_

Taken aback, Donna stared at the shining blue eyes. No, there was no mistake. This was really the Doctor. And his attitude lacked the previous innocence. He looked so arrogant, so self-important! So this was what he really thought of her, of them, of humanity. What a pompous bastard! It was one of those rare times when she truly felt hurt and did not know how to hide her pain.

"By the way, you're naked. Good luck with locating your dresser though, if it still exists!" she said before turning back her heels toward the door.

Donna had barely stepped back in the staircase that a loud noise shook the ship, forcing her to grab the guardrail to keep her balance. The loud noise sounded again. And again. It had a metallic echo in it as if...

"Is someone banging at the door?" she wondered as she walked into the console room and gasped:

The red light was flashing.


	3. Chapter 3

Donna jumped as the aggressive banging resonated once more. This time, the door seemed to give a little. Had the Doctor said no one could enter the Tardis? That the spaceship could resist to the assault of Genghis Khan's fiercest warriors? Not feeling particularly reassured, Donna cringed and out of reflex, hid behind the central console as the next bang blew the door open.

"Doctor?! Show yourself, Doctor!" A grave voice thundered.

Maybe it was the authority of tyranny or maybe it was her grandpa's words to stand up to enemies, but at this command and despite her shaking legs, Donna slowly rose to her feet to pick a look at the invader while moving aside to mask the Doctor's cocooned body.

A tall man, a looking-angry tall man, a looking-angry-tall-man wearing a sort of a dark burgundy, made of velvet robe was standing in the Tardis' doorframe with all the arrogant standing of an old magistrate. What sort of bonker is this? Donna wondered as she noticed the metal gauntlet on his left hand. Half medieval knight and half Roman senator made for quite a curious mix.

Donna was searching her words when suddenly, the man stepped several feet forward, stopped right in front of her and pierced her with his icy blue gaze, his mouth slowly drawing a curved smile before anger twisted it again.

"How could you fall so low is a mystery, Doctor," he said with an unmistaken disdain. Or was it closer to plain disgust?

"I... I... I'm not the Doctor," Donna whispered, feeling the crushing weight of his condescending judgment compressing the oxygen in her lungs.

"Doctor! Show yourself at once!" he thundered again, glancing all around the control room, still not thinking to cast a look at the ground...

Her gaze shaking, Donna tried hard not to look at the defenseless form lying behind the console, a couple of feet to her right and that the man was bound to notice any second now, no matter how hard she wanted to avoid this to happen.

"I'm Donna, Donna Noble. And who are you?" she asked, forcing herself to engage the conversation in the feeble hope that she could buy the Doctor time to finish his synchronization and jump out of his cocoon, ready for the battle because, if there was one thing the man did not look like, it was friendly.

"Apes... still barely evolved I see." The man smirked again and shoved her aside violently enough to send her bounce against the guardrail.

Eyes wide opened with fear, she watched him kneel next to the Doctor.

"When will you learn, you stupid boy?" he muttered after taking a deep breath.

"Oh, I've learned, don't worry. Move away now."

Donna jumped again. She had not realized the Doctor-teenager was standing just a mere meter behind her, pointing his screwdriver to the man's chest.

"Then you should choose your weapon better if only to threaten me," the man replied, obviously not scared of the sonic tool.

"Humor me," the Doctor-teenager said, walking by Donna without casting a glance at her, something she appreciated because she could not help but feel embarrassed by his total lack of decency.

"I've always known this would happen to you again," the man muttered as he stood up, removed his coat and threw it to the Doctor-teenager who took it and put it on before scanning Donna with his screwdriver.

"Oh, haven't you? Really? What else have you known? Homo Sapiens with a trace of Neanderthal. Not entirely ape anymore. They developed language, you know, hundreds of different, sophisticated languages, well... I admit they're still simple enough to learn in a matter of hours. But they're certainly more evolved than apes. Much more interesting. Very smart. Well... smart enough. For now."

"Oi!" Donna cringed, feeling insulted though she was not sure why. It was not so easy to deny one's genetic ancestors after all. But who was that man? Oh no... she thought, realizing now that their eyes look too alike to be a coincidence. And the sarcastic tone they used to talk to each other... it reminded her of when she was talking to her mother! Arguing more exactly.

"Whatever pleases you," the man replied. "Now, what is a smart-enough ape doing in the Tardis? And please don't tell me you've been copulating with it."

Yeap! That was the kind of full of reproach, inappropriate question her mother could annoy her with.

"Wait a second. Is this man your father?" she asked the teenager-Doctor.

"See? Smart ape. And so what? What if I did? It is none of your business I reckon. And no, you can forget about it: I am not coming back. So! Now that you've brilliantly established that your time and space tag and chase skills are still the best in the universe, the door is there, help yourself out of my Tardis."

"Your Tardis?! You mean the one you stole."

"No. The one I will steal. I know, it's all a bit confusing, but I'm sure you can figure it out later when you'll be sitting in your presidential room, in your presidential armchair, in the middle of your presidential guard, your presidential counsel, and all the people your overinflated pride likes to surround itself with. Now, off you go. Hop! If you leave now you might be back in time for supper. You being the all-mighty President of the Time Lords, shouldn't be too difficult of a challenge. Right in your sleeve might I say, isn't it?"

"Don't use that tone with me! Who do you think you are? You little-"

"Doctor. I'm the Doctor. And you're the President. And she is the Smart Ape of Chiswick even if I'm not sure how I know this but I think it is the right name, Chiswick. Roll nicely on the tongue. But like it does matter where she comes from anyway? In another hand, it matters where you are about to go. I can give you a lift if you need. A couple of parsecs before dinner, nothing better to open the appetite!"

"You are talking nonsense."

"Am I? Oh my! what a surprise it is that it comes as a surprise for you! Me? Not making sense! Or are you too old now to remember? Because I do remember. Everything. Every minute, every second perfectly. These were your words: 'He is strong. Showing him the Time vortex two years earlier than it is the norm will make him stronger!' A presidential privilege! Even when everybody was warning you of the risks! You dismissed all of them with all your stupid arrogance. Strong you were, then strong enough to endure I was. Then guess what! You were wrong!"

"Oh, you really think that, don't you? You still really think that after all these years? And yet, you are the living proof that I was right."

"You were wrong, and you're still wrong."

"Then tell me, if you think so lowly of yourself, that you are so weak that you can only run away from your responsibilities. Tell me what will happen if I..."

The man let his words trail as he raised his gloved hand toward the teenager-Doctor who could not help but take a step back. Seeing a sudden genuine fear in his icy blue eyes washing away all the previous anger sent a wave of cold shivers running down Donna's spine.

"No, don't..." he whispered. "I cannot regenerate in this form, you know this. Nobody can!"

"Who talks about killing you?" the man asked as he suddenly lurched to his left and pulled the cocoon away from the Tardis' console, disconnecting it, severing the link in the most abrupt way.

The reaction was immediate: both the teenager-Doctor and the Tardis emitted the most terrible shriek Donna had yet to hear. She was certain blood was pouring out of her eyes and ears as she fell on her knees and watched through a blurry haze the teenager-Doctor vanish in a whitish glow while the Doctor's body in the cocoon started to convulse so badly it hopped out of the central platform.

"Ape from Chiswick he said, right? Then back to Chiswick, you go now!" The man exclaimed, pushing and pulling the console's levers.

"NO! WAIT! What..." did you do to the Doctor? Donna wanted to scream, but her voice got stuck in her throat as the Tardis' engine engaged and the control room started to swirl like the maddest spinning-top. Before long, she was seeing green and gray alternating at a terrible speed until her world fell into the darkest well and she knew nothing but her heart beating the fiercest drum in her chest.

Donna was persuaded that she was still falling when she slowly came back to her senses and wondered if the dark blotches she was seeing were people looking at her. They were talking, calling her... helping her? Maybe waiting for an ambulance?

"Doctor?..." she whispered as her sight became clearer. And clearer. And a little clearer.

"Four knights? Four knights in full battle armor? In Chiswick? What the..." she exclaimed as she heaved herself on her elbows, a move that prompted the quick apparition of four very pointed swords less than an inch from her face.

"You've got to be kidding me! DOCTOR!"


	4. Chapter 4

Roughly at the same age Time Lords escorted their most gifted children from the Academy to the rift through which one could see the time vortex, Donna Noble of Chiswick Public Elementary School, London, the Earth, in the Solar System, a small and unimportant set of planets lost somewhere in the lower right quadrant of the Milky Way, Donna Noble of Chiswick dreamed of meeting a knight.

But not any knight.

One from the dark and ancient times of the Middle-Ages, one who would have known of King Arthur's court and fought dragons on his path to Camelot. A brave knight with a shining armor from head to toe and a slightly dented sword, proof if necessary of his fiery participation in many victorious battles.

By night or by day, Donna had fantasized about _her knight_ and by all means, a dumbfounded smile should be illuminating her face with joy at this precise instant for indeed, the one standing in front of her was her dream come true, with his armor, and his helmet with a white panache on top.

If it had stopped to this, it would have been perfect indeed.

"So this is what they meant by Augmented Reality", Donna thought, feeling the bitter taste of ash in her mouth already.

Three cruel but inarguable details made the dream train derail: one, both knight and destrier surprisingly did not smell of Colgate Fresh toothpaste; two, even though she had to admit that some of her adult fantasies could have implied some sort of bonding, the knight of her dream had never ever tied her to a stake in the middle of the village square surrounded by a looking-angry-scared crowd, and three:

"I swear that I won't transform into a dragon," she moaned, "there's no need to point all your arrows and swords to me, really!"

"Seelent,!" the knight shouted while the others in the assembly discussed what more proof did they need to condemn her to a long and painful agony.

"There's enough straw, don't bother to bring more," she said to a woman that threw the ballot at Donna's tied feet before running back into the crowd that had gathered at the center of the village to witness this perfect example of swift man justice and divine retribution.

"You must be kidding me..." Donna moaned in her teeth, closing her eyes and holding her breath as one man came close to her, touched her hair and, taking a strand in his hand raised it to show the assembly, gargling at all speed a long suite of words Donna did not need the Tardis to translate to understand the general message: she was doomed.

"If you want to know, that is not my natural color. I'm more sort of brown in fact. This is just hair dye. Not true ginger. Pigments, that's all," she said, trying anything to escape the stake. Who wouldn't lie in such circumstances?

"Seelent! Thee witch!" the knight shouted again, pressing the tip of his sword on her throat before moving back to snatch a torch from the hands of a young lad.

 _Doctor! Damn you!_ Donna pleaded and cursed in her mind, her wide-open eyes staring at the sky in a terror that she had never thought possible to feel. If the Doctor was telepathic, surely he would be able to pick up her distress call? Now would be the time... the only time she had left.

"Burn her! Burn her alive!" The crowd started to shout in unison.

"I'm not a witch! DOCTOR! DOCTOR!" she screamed to make her voice heard above the vindictive cries, tears running down her eyes as the knight of her dreams threw the torch at her feet.

Donna screamed as the flames burst around her tied ankles. She screamed as the sparkling flames quickly surrounded her. She screamed as the village and the sky disappeared behind a wall of yellowish sparkling flames. She screamed as, for a moment, she thought she saw stars or maybe some northern lights. She screamed as the world turned all white around her. She screamed as she collapsed on a cold, solid, white floor.

Bewildered to be alive, Donna touched the clean marble surface, moving on all fours in confusion, until her eyes, still blurry with tears, met with leather-clad boots with thick rubber soles. Slowly, she raised her head and frowned in confusion at the massive knight in armor in front of her.

"Oh! you've put on some weight..."

"STO-VO-KO-THO-CLO-VO-KOH!" The massive knight barked, suddenly aiming a rifle at her head.

"I AM NOT A WITCH!" Donna cried out.

As she raised her hands above her head out of protection, she noticed in doing so that her hands were free of ties and so were her feet. But her relief was short-lived as the weird, like in alien-weird, knight swiftly put magnetic restraints on her wrists.

"What?!" she exclaimed as the weird, alien knight removed his helmet.

"STO-VO-KO-THO-CLO-VO-KOH!"

"Wow! A talking and standing rhinoceros? No way!"

"Is that a problem?"

Donna jumped and pivoted fast on her knees to face a woman with a very white, like in ghostly white, face and white buckled hair. Almost human-like, if it was not for the red, devilish eyes.

"No way! A female-albino-demon and a syllabo-rhino as a guard-dog!" Donna said, not believing her eyes and suddenly considering the possibility that she had died in the fire and this was the afterlife. After all the despair she had caused to her mother, some other friends, and even more not-so-friends like Neris that she had been too glad to stab in the back, figuratively, of course, it was to be expected. In front of her was her divine retribution. "Am I in Hell?"

"You are on the Excelsior."

"Oh, right. And is the Excelsior the name of a special place in hell, a circle maybe?"

"A circle? I guess that depends on your definition of the word."

"STO-VO-KO-TO-CLO-VO-KO!"

"Remove her restraints. I will take her from here," the female-demon said to the syllabo-rhino.

With a strange curiosity, Donna watched the guard-dog obey and felt the cold, white, clean floor vibrating under the pace of his huge boots as he left.

"So I am dead," she muttered, looking at the white walls. Everything was white here. "That's weird... I'd thought hell would be a little darker than that."

"You are perfectly alive and on the Excelsior. However, if you tell me where Hell is, I will make the necessary arrangements to have you send there once we have cleared your situation."

"I am alive, really? Wait... what situation?"

"We wish to know how did you manage to create a rift in Time and Space in the Medusa Cascade."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. The medu-what?"

"The Medusa Cascade is a protected area. It is a level one crime to trespass on this part of space. And to say the least, tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time in it is an outrage, an incredibly terrible felony," the female-demon said as she moved toward the center of the wide open place where they were standing.

The clean floor opened and a white pole rose with a dark display the size of a palm. The female-demon touched it and straight away, a large panel in the wall open like two curtains moving apart to reveal the biggest cinema screen Donna had ever seen. But that was not what made her gasp. What made her gasp was the sight of space filled with lights, dancing lights, dark purple to light pink and emerald green to yellow.

"It's beautiful. What is it? Is it the Me-"

"The Medusa Cascade, yes. And no, it is not beautiful anymore. It is injured, bleeding particles and energy from this dimension into others, condemning this whole region of space to exotic radiations and a slow death. All by your fault."

"But I didn't do anything! I was just... I was just being burnt alive in the middle-ages and suddenly I was there. I haven't got the slightest idea of how I escaped, I swear!"

"You reached telepathically to us and yet, your species is too primitive to be. Unauthorized use of a telepathic genetic transfer device is a second-degree offense punishable by fifty cycles of imprisonment. But this is the least of your problems."

"Fifty cycles?! I did nothing except no dying and I don't even know how or why, so how could I break your laws? Oh! Wait a second... are you part of this Shadow Police Proclamation?"

"If you've heard of us, then you confess you know there are rules. Rules that you just broke. STO-KO-VO-KLO!" The female-demon-officer said with too polite a smile to be honest.

With dread, Donna heard the steps of the syllabo-guard-rhino coming back her way.

"Oh! Great! Did you just set me up? Don't say no because your big friend was just around the corner waiting for your orders!"

"Take her to cell number four-seven-zeta-nine-two-dot-three while she awaits her trial."

"Trial? At least I get a fair trial with a lawyer?" Donna protested when the rhino grabbed her arm.

Suddenly, the white room and the female-demon vanished.

The next moment, she looked around to a two-by-three meter, strictly bare cell. A door slid open and the guard-rhino stepped out.

"You must be kidding me!" Donna shouted out in anger. "I demand to talk to my lawyer! Right now!"

The rhino-guard stopped and turned to face her.

"No lawyer is required when the culprit is caught in the act. Justice is swift."

"Oh great! Wonderful! The rhino-guard knows how to talk English! WAIT! What is the punishment for breaking the Medusa thing? I'm entitled to know!"

"The punishment is death," the rhino-guard replied.

"Death?! Don't tell me you still burn people..."

"Death by disintegration."

"Oh, that seems so much better indeed..." Donna muttered as the door closed.

At least, she was alive. And that meant the Doctor could still rescue her. How long was she going to stay here?

A minute had not passed that a small slot in the door opened and the rhino's gloved hand appeared, pushing a small plate inside her cell.

Perplexed, Donna frowned at the little red and white pill in the middle of the plate.

"What is this?"

"Humanoid-life form standard dietary requirement."

Donna looked at the tiny pill, hesitating between awe and disgust. No. Really? Her last meal was going to be a pill?!

"Could I have a glass of water, please?" she asked, but the slot had already closed.

"I guess not..." she muttered, feeling hungry.

After staring at her miserable meal for about ten minutes, not able to determine if the lack of pleasure to eat the pill was going to be more hurtful than an empty stomach on the scaffold, Donna slowly opened her mouth, and with a certain amount of disgust on her face, put the pill on her tongue and swallowed when a familiar buzzing sounded.

"Did they give you a pill too? Whatever you do, do not eat that pill!" an even more familiar voice said.


End file.
